"The Old Man Could Handle a Spade, Just Like His Old Man"

(Note: the title is taken from a poem called "Digging" by Seamus Heaney)

Last night, I went to sleep and it was snowing. This morning I woke up and it was still snowing, only much harder; "you'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen" (from Robert Frost's "Birches"). My car had about eight inches or more on it, and everything was as white as a jar of Miracle Whip. Of course, that meant two things. No, I didn't make more pizza, although that is a good idea. Perhaps I shall make one as soon as I am finished writing. Nope, amid "the sweep of easy wind and downy flake" (from Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening"), I went out to clean the walks and the driveway.

Interestingly enough, the entire neighborhood had had the same idea as I, and our menial tasks soon developed into something like a block party; of course, instead of beer and pretzels, we all had snow shovels. Some of the neighbor boys refused to participate in the excavation of snow-covered pavement, choosing instead to tie themselves and their toboggans to their ugly cream-colored dog and yell at him until the poor mutt decided to pull those lazy ingrates up and down Buckler Way.

Scraping off a driveway takes a good bit of time and exertion when you have something like eight to ten inches in front of a three-car garage. Worse yet, it continued to snow while I shoveled off scads of frozen precipitation. Consequently, I finished the driveway just in time to clear off the front walk and porch one more time.

At last, I'd finished. I went into the house, took off my shoes and, cringing at the pain of my newly formed--and popped--blisters, announced, "It's all done." My mom turned around, and, without missing a beat, she says, "Can you go take a few shovelfuls off of the patio?" Apparently, the poor wee doggie in the backyard could na' barely walk around, what wi' his shaggy, baggy belly draggin' about in the swollen snow drifts.

So, once back in my soggy socks and shoes, I set about to clear the patio, which I did quickly, though grudgingly (Truth be known, at that point I felt like I was "digging on my [own] grave" (from Thomas Hardy's "Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?"). I'd had enough shoveling and decided that snow is much more fun if you play in it rather than shovel it. So, casting away my shovel, I did something I had not done for a couple of years at least.

I made a snowman. And a snowwoman, too (I guess I should probably should call them snow people, huh? D--- this PC universe!). By the way, you can tell it's a snowwoman because she has a skirt. I think she's also a little bustier and her base is a little wider than the snowman's as well, but that may just be my imagination.

Now, snowperson-building is itself a form of art, so I decided to have some fun with it. For my model, I chose the old comic strips of Calvin and Hobbes when Calvin would build snowpeople with horrible mutilations, trees growing out of their snow-stomachs, faces half-melted with "acid", etc.




My personal tribute to the snowmen of Calvin and Hobbes. I call
them Ball and Chain.

 Well, seeing as how such snowpeople also indicate a certain level of inner mania and mental troubles on the part of their creator (that would be me), I decided to take the terror down a notch (Note: My original plan was to have the snowwoman stabbing the snowman in the back with a shovel, but should Gladys or Wilson have a peek over the fence, a scene like that might give them the wrong idea about me).

Ultimately, I went with carrot eyes and noses and banana mouths, which are perfect for facial constructions because they can either be a smile or a frown. I decided that snowwoman ought to be smiling as she assaulted the snowman from behind.

I had also originally built a snowchild for these deranged snowpeople, but given the circumstances I chose to dismantle the poor little iceman. After all, it's the children who suffer from fallings-out of this sort. Better to have snow child at all.